Visitors to Dihua Street come for the dried seafood, the herbal shops and the Qing- and Japanese-era shopfronts, and many stop at Xiahai City God Temple, the 19th-century shrine where tourists ask the matchmaker god Yue Lao for a partner. Since December 2025 the street has offered a second, stranger blessing. Farther along, behind a pair of door gods painted as a cat and a dog, a golden god sits with a cat at his left hand and his right hand resting on a dog's head.
This is Cho Yuu Temple, which describes itself on its signage and its social accounts as Taiwan's first temple dedicated to pets. The plaque over the door reads "preparatory office," which is what it legally is: registering a temple in Taiwan takes eight to 10 years. Whether it was the first matters less than what it has done with the tradition it inherited — and it has done a great deal.
The god is Baosheng Emperor, a physician from the Song dynasty so revered that successive emperors kept promoting him until he was entitled to a dragon crown and a dragon robe. Here he wears neither. He is dressed as a country doctor.
"We're looking after animals," said Boz Lu, who founded the temple. "We don't need something so imposing that it frightens them away." The change was put to the god himself by throwing divination blocks, and he agreed.
A Carving Where Animals Sit as Equals
The bigger change is one any regular temple-goer spots at once. In Chinese religious art, an animal beside a god is a divine beast, and divine beasts know their place: underfoot, or saddled. They are never seated beside the god as equals.
This god keeps company with a cat and a dog. At his feet are a fish, a snake, a turtle, a mouse, a rabbit, an insect and a bird — not mythical creatures, but the pets Taiwanese families actually keep. Behind him rise a tiger and a dragon. The temple's signage turns the carving into a game: count the animals and divine beasts. The answer is 11.
"We never wanted to bully animals," Lu said. "So we carved it so that all living things are equal." The god signed off on the design with five straight positive throws. Carving the temple's full set of statues cost more than NT$1 million, or about US$30,000.
The tiger and the dragon are there for a reason. Legend says a man-eating tiger once choked on the hairpin of a woman it had eaten, and waylaid the doctor-god on a road to beg for help. He cured it on condition that it stop killing people and follow him. A dragon with failing eyes, disguised as a woodcutter, got the same treatment. The temple's point is simple: this god was treating animals centuries before anyone built him a temple for pets.
Who Is Baosheng Emperor
- Born Wu Ben, Song dynasty, Baijiao in Quanzhou. A physician, deified after his death.
- Titled by successive emperors: Dadao Gong, Zhenren Xianshi, Huaqiao Gong, then Baosheng Emperor — a rank, not a name.
- Taiwan's principal temple to him is Xuejia Ciji Temple in Tainan; Cho Yuu Temple's statue is a branch-spirit from there.
- Entitled to a dragon robe. Wears a doctor's dress here.
Door Gods Redrawn as a Cat and a Dog
The same thinking redrew the entrance. Traditional door gods are armored generals with glaring faces — exactly what you do not want a nervous dog to see on arrival. After both the god and the temple's Taoist priest approved, an illustrator painted them as a cat and a dog in full armor, each gripping a staff that bears the temple's name. A priest then consecrated them, so they guard the door in earnest.
Look closely and the illustrator has hidden a crowd: a shiba inu and a corgi at the dog god's side, a calico and a tabby around the cat. The cat god rests a paw on a can of pet food, and beside the can sits a leopard cat, Taiwan's endangered native wildcat. One figure matters more to the temple than the rest. The small black poodle on the dog god's shoulder is Heibao, Lu's own dog.
The Tiger Lord Sits at a Dog's Eye Level
The tiger from the legend has a shrine of his own here, as the Tiger Lord that every Baosheng Emperor temple keeps. He does not sit on the altar. He sits on the floor beneath it, in a gold-lit niche strewn with offerings, at exactly the height of a visiting dog.
In recent years Taiwanese have taken to praying to the Tiger Lord for money, thanks to a pun in Taiwanese. Cho Yuu Temple asked him to redirect it. Here, the fortune goes to the pet.
This is one of four reports from Cho Yuu Temple published as Taiwan at Prayer, a Storm Media series introducing Taiwanese folk religion through the animals people bring to it.
